Two Poems by Michael Juliani

Fairytale of Old Town Pasadena 

I’m waiting for your shift to end 
scooping baklava ice cream in an alley 

storefront better suited to hawking 
bacon-wrapped hot dogs to the drunks staggering home 

with sticky shoes from the 35er, just another 
night of the trade agreement between flirtatious 

bullshit and muted televisions — that ripple effect 
of highlighted touchdowns and life stories 

shouted above the Dodger-fan din. 
Just another slow walk to the Del Mar metro station 

tucked in the bowels of its Mission-style condos, 
overpriced, leaky-ceilinged, laundry-smelling rooms 

with walls thin enough to gouge schadenfreude 
laughter through our sleep. The hallway vistas  

of orange trees and felled lumber in the Baldwin-
and-Huntington-owned hills now rowed by mom-and-pops 

with GoFundMe QR codes behind their glass. It’s always 
late at night. Traffic slips down Colorado Boulevard 

while I think of my mother’s mother feeding me 
burnt toast with strawberry jam, dipped in black coffee.

Booze and varied commerce aren’t enough 
to gild a city. The stickered box of stoplight wires 

at DeLacey and Green gives me a place to breathe 
plumes of escape from men in Cigars by Chivas. 

I hope one of these passing oldtimers 
recognizes me from a New Year’s party 

I looted their liquor cabinets with their grandson’s blessing.
I hope they invite me back for a pot of chili 

and a Rose Parade pin, you and I rubbing noses 
in a childbearing mood while the new January air 

makes us feel like we’re finally 
off the nightshift, sprung loose from the dark enchantment 

of all we keep repeating through the years. 






Ollies Behind the Hair Salon 

Garrett, the trust-funded burglar who grew 
up down the block, lurked the neighborhood, 
possum-souled, stripping copper 

from brunch spots. By eighteen, heroin had withered him 
to a phantom who haunted 
the Airstream trailer where his dad exiled him. 

Once, the year my mom threw out 
my dad, Garrett cornered me 
skateboarding behind Starr’s Hair Salon 

where my mother indulged her sole hour 
of Me Time. I wasn’t supposed to ride, promised 
I wouldn’t snap my collarbone 

just to fit in with kids whose parents,
she said, left them alone too much. 
“You just learning?” Garrett asked — grinning 

like a jack-o-lantern with its candle 
blown out. His eyes followed my feet. 
I was scared of breaking my neck 

and not being able to hide it 
from Mom. But Garrett scared me more.
“Let me see,” he said, nodding at the board 

my dad mailed from Sherman Oaks,
a hotel where he scrawled, “The key 
is to half-hope you fall.”

He once climbed an oak the city 
marked with an X. I caught his wallet 
as it fell from his pocket

like a fledgling full of cash. 
Mom only let me skate short distances, 
no tricks. “If you break something,” she said, 

“I’m not the one who will pay.” 
I kicked it to Garrett, holding my breath.
His dad, pushing eighty, shelled peanuts on their porch 

nights that Garrett was scoring, the Airstream dim 
behind bandana curtains. From him, 
I learned the art of nodding 

to neighbors strolling in the dark. 
Hello, somehow, too much.
By the time the gingkos yellowed again, 

the house, Spanish with dry fountains, 
would be Garrett’s to light with candles,
laugh at his own shadow 

scattering on the drywall. He slid 
the board back, loped toward the ARCO
where my dad would buy me Smarties  

and fill up before leaving town. “Sick board,” 
Garrett said. “Don’t let anyone take it.” 

Michael Juliani is a poet, editor, and writer from Pasadena, California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in outlets such as The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Third Coast, Bennington Review, Washington Square Review, and Sixth Finch. He has an MFA in poetry from Columbia University.

18 May 2026